


Et Ne Nos Inducas

by osprey_archer



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Self-Flagellation, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-02
Updated: 2013-04-02
Packaged: 2017-12-07 05:49:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/745004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Athelstan is trying to flagellate himself for penance. Ragnar offers to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Et Ne Nos Inducas

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to carmarthen and sineala for giving this a look!

Ragnar had not realized that the priest had gone to the waterfront to wash. If he had known, he would not have walked there, because the priest seemed so shy of people seeing his body. Though they lived in close quarters, he had not seen more than glimpses of the priest’s skin as he hastily changed clothes. 

Ragnar had half-supposed the priest must have some deformity, something besides his god to make him so shy of showing himself: but no. Athelstan knelt by the waterside, his shirt on the ground beside him. Below his curly black hair his back was very pale; no surprise, when his skin never saw the sun. But for all that he was a well-built man, broad shoulders. Not yet strong shoulders, but time and work would strengthen them. Ragnar traced the line of his spine with his eyes. The priest’s muscles moved smoothly under his skin, shoulderblades lifting as he flicked his belt over his shoulder and - 

He was whipping himself with his own belt. 

“What are you doing?” Ragnar asked. 

The priest dropped his belt, diving for his shirt even as he twisted to look at Ragnar. “Washing,” he said, pulling on his shirt as he stood. 

Ragnar strode down the bank. He sat on a rock next to the priest, hands hanging between his knees. “Do you usually beat yourself when you wash?” he asked conversationally. 

The priest’s pale face flushed. He looked like he wished to be elsewhere, but he lifted his eyes to Ragnar’s face. So blue, his eyes, like the summer sky. Ragnar had noticed the priest’s eyes almost before anything else. 

Not only for their color. When they first met the priest had been shaking with fright like a little child, but the priest had not lowered his eyes to the floor. 

He didn’t look away from Ragnar now, either, although his cheeks were as red as if he’d been slapped. “I was performing penance,” he said, and then searched for words to explain. “That is, punishing myself for my sins.” 

Another odd custom. Ragnar felt sometimes that the priest’s mind was an unexplored country of its own, and he liked that. “For what sins?” Ragnar asked. 

And then the priest did look down, folding his belt over in his hands. “For lust.”

Ragnar laughed. “For Lagertha?” he asked, and when the priest just got redder, slapped him on the back. “For me?” Ragnar teased. “For both of us at once? Tell me, go on.” 

But the priest’s lips pressed together, his face flaming, and he shook his head. He wouldn’t say anything else if Ragnar kept pressing, and it was no fun when the priest wouldn’t talk. Ragnar changed direction. “Is it working?” he asked. “Have you scourged yourself of your lust, priest?”

“I had only just started,” the priest said defensively, and sighed. “No. I can’t hit myself hard enough.” 

Ragnar leaned back on his rock. “Do you want me to help?” he asked. 

It was the impulse of a moment, and Ragnar half-regretted it even as he heard it leave his mouth: he did not believe beating would do anything but raise bloodlust, certainly in him and maybe the priest too. Ragnar never wanted Lagertha so much as when he’d been fighting, with her or anyone else. 

But the priest didn’t see Ragnar’s hesitation, because he was hesitating too, turning his belt over in his hands with the strange inward gaze he often had. Then he lifted his eyes to Ragnar’s face and thrust his belt to Ragnar. “Please,” he said; and as soon as Ragnar had taken the belt from his hands, the priest turned around and shucked off his shirt. 

A red welt bloomed against the priest’s back where he had hit himself earlier. Ragnar wanted to touch it, press his fingertips against it, see his priest shiver under his touch: but if he touched Athelstan now, perhaps Athelstan would not want to be whipped, and suddenly Ragnar wanted to whip him above all things. The priest would shiver under that, surely: and he had asked for it, had even said _please_. 

The priest braced himself against a birch tree. “Pater noster,” he began, the prayer that Ragnar had heard so many times already: but the tension in his voice was new. “Qui es in caelis...”

Ragnar ought to ask the priest to take off his trousers - it would be better to hit him on the ass - but he did not think Athelstan would agree, or like to be asked. And perhaps that much temptation would do no good for Ragnar, either. 

“Where do you want me to hit you?” Ragnar asked. 

The priest gestured vaguely at his upper back, then braced himself against the tree again. “Adveniat - ” the priest began. Ragnar brought the belt down across the priest’s shoulder blades, not too hard. “ - regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua - ” Another lash. “Harder!”

There was some echo of Lagertha in his demanding tone, and Ragnar felt a heat beginning in his belly. He drew his arm back and brought the belt down with a crack that knocked the priest to his knees. 

Ragnar stood still a moment, belt drooping from his hand, staring at the scarlet welt forming across the priest’s back. “Priest?” he said, moving to look into his priest’s face. He could not tell if Athelstan was in pain. His blue eyes were wide and not quite focused, like a man dazed by a bad wound, yet his face was not contorted: he looked as though he gazed into faraway things. 

Ragnar crouched down beside the priest and put a finger under Athelstan’s chin, tilting it up till Athelstan glanced at him. His ragged breath was warm on Ragnar’s hand. “You’ll tell me if I hurt you,” Ragnar said. 

“It’s penance,” the priest said. His eyes still did not quite focus on Ragnar, and - ah. Ragnar’s breath caught in his throat: the priest’s cock was beginning to strain at his trousers. Pain took some men that way. “It’s supposed to hurt.” 

“Supposed to hurt, yes. But I don’t want to hurt you too much,” Ragnar said, low-voiced. 

Athelstan’s gaze dropped to the leaf litter, and he gave a soft bitter laugh. It startled Ragnar: he hadn’t heard his priest make such a sound before. “I suppose I wouldn’t be much use to you, injured,” Athelstan said. 

Ragnar cupped Athelstan’s jaw in his hand, lifting Athelstan’s face to make Athelstan look at him again. Athelstan’s stubbly cheek was rough under his hand. Ragnar stroked his thumb over the smooth cheekbone. “I don’t want to hurt you too much,” Ragnar said again, looking into Athelstan’s eyes. “So tell me if I do.” 

Athelstan nodded slowly. “Yes?” Ragnar prompted.

“Yes, I will.” 

“And I will stop if there is blood,” Ragnar said. He kissed Athelstan briskly on the forehead, then stood and unwound the belt. “Get ready then.”

The priest braced himself against the tree again. A welt rose against his back from the last strike, and somehow Ragnar’s world seemed to shrink to that, the red mark he had made against the pale flesh. “Pater noster,” the priest began, and gasped as Ragnar snapped the belt across his back. “Pater noster, qui es in - “ another blow - “in caelis - ” 

And then Ragnar could not distinguish the words anymore, because the priest spoke so fast, gasps breaking up his words when leather slapped against flesh. Ragnar could smell the leather, warming in his hand, and the scent of Athelstan’s sweat. Athelstan’s hands slipped on the smooth birch tree, and at the next blow he crumpled to his knees again. 

Ragnar drew back for another blow, then stopped himself, though his wrist twitched and his breath hitched in his throat. “ - et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris,” the priest gasped, the lines of his ribs visible against his skin as he panted. A spiderweb of scarlet welts flamed against his upper back. “Why did you stop? Keep going!” 

Ragnar wanted to press his hands against the priest’s scarlet skin: to press the welts and hear him moan and bear him to the ground. Except Athelstan would not like it, and it would be no fun if Athelstan did not like it. 

“Ragnar - ” Athelstan said, harsh-voiced, half-pleading. His back arched when Ragnar lashed him again. He liked that, at least, the words tumbling over each other as he took up his prayer again, “Et ne nos inducas in - ” 

Ragnar lashed him, lighter now, but stinging. The priest rocked with the blows. “In - in tentationem,” he stammered. “Et ne - et ne nos - ”

Athelstan’s stomach hollowed with each breath: he was close, so close, his hands clenching on the fallen birch leaves, and he moaned at the next lash. If the priest would just touch himself - would let Ragnar touch him - 

Ragnar brought down a solid blow across the web of welts. The priest cried out, body arching with the blow; and he seemed to collapse forward, as if all strength had left him.

Suddenly the waterfront was so quiet that Ragnar could hear his own harsh breathing. He became aware, as he had not been quite aware before, how hard he was.

And how still his priest was. Perhaps in his own lust, Ragnar had gotten carried away. 

“Priest?” Ragnar said. He nudged the priest with his foot, but Athelstan did not respond. Ragnar knelt beside him. “Athelstan?” he said. 

Athelstan lifted his head. Tears stained his cheeks, but his face seemed illuminated from within, his eyes fixed on some point far away and shining. “I saw the face of God,” he said, and a sudden smile bloomed across his face, like sunshine after rain. Ragnar had never seen Athelstan smile so, and the thought came to him that perhaps the priest had smiled more before Ragnar burnt his home. “Did you hear, Ragnar? I saw...”

“I heard,” Ragnar said, and put a hand on Athelstan’s shoulder to draw him away from the tree. Athelstan shuddered, an aftershock of his pleasure, and Ragnar’s loins flamed at the feel of Athelstan’s hot skin under his hand. 

He drew Athelstan, so they sat next to each other, leaning against the rock on the waterfront. Ragnar pulled up his knees so Athelstan could not see how hard he was. Athelstan seemed to be moving through a trance. It worried Ragnar, though perhaps such a reaction was to be expected in a man who had kept himself celibate for his god for so long. 

Ragnar pulled Athelstan to lean against his side. Athelstan did not quite relax against him, but another shudder went through him. Ragnar’s cock ached at the feeling. 

He wanted to touch Athelstan, and he thought perhaps Athelstan needed to be touched, to calm him. Yet if he put his hands on Athelstan’s skin, let himself feel the muscles in Athelstan’s shoulders, ran his hands down Athelstan’s sides - Ragnar drew his legs up closer - it would be very hard to stop. 

Ragnar put a hand to Athelstan’s hair instead, pressing the heel of his hand against the nape of Athelstan’s neck and stroking his fingers through Athelstan’s curls. Athelstan gave one last shudder. Ragnar’s hand clenched a little in Athelstan’s hair, his other hand digging into his own knee so he would not touch Athelstan further. Or himself. He disentangled his hand from Athelstan’s hair.

Lagertha. He would go see Lagertha, as soon as he was sure Athelstan was well enough to be left. 

Athelstan relaxed boneless against the rock, head tilting back, eyes closed, face bright in the sun. He brushed his tears off his cheeks with the back of his hand, as if he did not quite want to touch them, and then opened his eyes. So blue. “Thank you,” Athelstan said, as if it took him some effort to speak. 

Ragnar, caught in Athelstan’s eyes, said, “Hmm?” 

“The lust is gone,” said Athelstan. He sat up gingerly, and winced at the sting in his back. “So - thank you.” 

“Of course,” said Ragnar. “And if you need help doing penance again, I am here.”

Athelstan smiled and looked away, almost shy. He had not quite wiped all the tears from his face, and Ragnar lifted his hand to Athelstan’s cheeks and wiped the last traces away. “Finish washing up, priest,” he said, gruff, and drew away his hand. “We have a lot of work to do.” 

He stood, glad that his loose clothing hid his hardness, ruffled his priest's hair, and went to find Lagertha.


End file.
